Natively Connect to Freshservice Data in PHP

Drop the CData ODBC Driver for Freshservice into your LAMP or WAMP stack to build Freshservice-connected Web applications. This article shows how to use PHP's ODBC built-in functions to connect to Freshservice data, execute queries, and output the results.

Configure a DSN

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

Start by setting the Profile connection property to the location of the Freshservice Profile on disk (e.g. C:\profiles\Freshservice.apip). Next, set the ProfileSettings connection property to the connection string for Freshservice (see below).

Freshservice API Profile Settings

Obtain your API Key from Profile Settings in the top-right corner of Freshservice. Your Domain is the subdomain from your account URL.

Establish a Connection

Open the connection to Freshservice by calling the odbc_connect or odbc_pconnect methods. To close connections, use odbc_close or odbc_close_all.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC API Source","user","password");

Connections opened with odbc_connect are closed when the script ends. Connections opened with the odbc_pconnect method are still open after the script ends. This enables other scripts to share that connection when they connect with the same credentials. By sharing connections among your scripts, you can save system resources, and queries execute faster.

$conn = odbc_pconnect("CData ODBC API Source","user","password");
...
odbc_close($conn); //persistent connection must be closed explicitly

Create Prepared Statements

Create prepared statements and parameterized queries with the odbc_prepare function.

$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM AgentGroups WHERE Name = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with odbc_execute.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC API Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM AgentGroups WHERE Name = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('Support Team'));
  

Execute nonparameterized queries with odbc_exec.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC API Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Id, Name FROM AgentGroups WHERE Name = 'Support Team'");
  

Process Results

Access a row in the result set as an array with the odbc_fetch_array function.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Freshservice data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Id, Name FROM AgentGroups WHERE Name = 'Support Team'");
while($row = odbc_fetch_array($query)){
 echo $row["Id"] . "\n";
}

Display the result set in an HTML table with the odbc_result_all function.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Freshservice data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM AgentGroups WHERE Name = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('Support Team'));
if($success)
  odbc_result_all($query);

More Example Queries

You will find complete information on the driver's supported SQL in the help documentation. The code examples above are Freshservice-specific adaptations of the PHP community documentation for all ODBC functions.